The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780674986558)

Perhaps no event in American history arouses more impassioned debate than the abolition of slavery. Answers to basic questions about who ended slavery, how, and why remain fiercely contested more than a century and a half after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. In The Long Emancipation, Ira Berlin draws upon decades of study to offer a framework for understanding slavery's demise in the United States. Freedom was not achieved in a moment, and emancipation was not an occasion but a near-century-long process--a shifting but persistent struggle that involved thousands of men and women.

"Ira Berlin ranks as one of the greatest living historians of slavery in the United States... The Long Emancipation offers a useful reminder that abolition was not the charitable work of respectable white people, or not mainly that. Instead, the demise of slavery was made possible by the constant discomfort inflicted on middle-class white society by black activists. And like the participants in today's Black Lives Matter movement, Berlin has not forgotten that the history of slavery in the United States--especially the history of how slavery ended--is never far away when contemporary Americans debate whether their nation needs to change."
--Edward E. Baptist, New York Times Book Review

Author: Ira Berlin
ISBN-10: 0674986555
ISBN-13: 9780674986558
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/05/2018
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.00h x 4.30w x 0.70d